Poverty Mother of All Crimes Essay

Does poverty give birth iniquity? argon people criminal because they are short, or are they poor because they are criminal? The latter is uncontroversial, stipulation the time and professional and educational experience inmates lose, the difficulties they break finding a job after their lay off etc.But what closely the former statement? Crime obviously has many causes, and poverty is more or less likely one of them in some cases. It seems likely that some poor people may sometimes experience to resort to theft in order to survive. But the causal relationship amidst criminal offence and poverty is only likely for some types of crimes. Other crimes, such as fraud, crimes of passion, serial murder etc. bear absolutely no link to poverty. at that place may be even an inverse link, since poor people are non in a position to carry out a crime like fraud or insider trading.This paper lists some of the statistics that show a possible correlation between poverty and crime mainl y property crime, more than violent crime. There is also the fact that African-Americans in the U.S. are overrepresented both(prenominal) in prisons and in poverty statistics (see here), indicating as well that there is a correlation. There is some anecdotical evidence (there are many news stories indicating a link, such as the stories about people stranded on a desert island, being subject to extreme scarcity and kind in crime such as murder and cannibalism). But theres also anecdotal evidence to the contrary. During the Great Depression, for example, crime did not increase significantly.Poverty can also be an verificatory cause of crime. As it leads to under-education it may make the choice of a criminal lifestyle more likely. This graph shows the proportion of US inmates that is illiterate, compared to total US illiteracy(source) I couldnt find any data on previous illiteracy, so it may be that under-education (and hence in many cases poverty) is not the cause of crime, but the consequence being in prison in principle doesnt help you to soak up educated.Anyway, it seems intuitively acceptable that there is some causal link between crime and poverty, in both directions. So dealing with crime without dealing with root causes of crime such as poverty, and only concentrate on punishment is indeed not the best option. However, none of this should implythat poverty somehow determines crime, or that crime is a necessary result of poverty many poor people are not criminals, and many rich people are that poor people are perhaps not mold to be criminals, but that they are more disposed to crime than other people that would be hurt that there are no other, perhaps more important causes of crime such as irresponsibility, sliminess etc. that poverty is somehow an excuse for crime, or perhaps even a justification I think its not even a mitigating circumstance that poverty should be reduced to a problem of crime poverty, slums and homelessness should not be elim inated because they are so-called breeding grounds of crime, but because we have a moral duty to do so. Given the causal link, we should also accept that poverty, like a bad upbringing, is often abused as a false excuse for crime.A related indecision is the following are poor inmates incarcerated because they are criminal or because they are poor and cant escape the law as easily as the rich? Article 14 of the International bargain on Civil and Political Rights gives everyone the right to legal defense, without charge if necessaryEveryone shall be entitled to have legal assistance assigned to him, in any case where the interests of justice so require, and without gestatement by him in any such case if he does not have sufficient means to pay for it